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Disappointing once again to note lack of ripple data despite indication in the "Test Methodology" that ripple details would be provided for PSU reviews.
Voltage output with increasing load is one consideration; cleanliness of voltage (ripple) is another issue. Reply

hey can u guys review corsair's HX620/HX520 psu? They're supposed to be kickass and im just curious how they'd rate compared to the psus u've reviewed. Thanks and keep these great reviews coming! Reply

I'm sure that when they'll run out of stuff to write about (again), there will be a review about Corsair 520HX/620HX. Or maybe 2 years from now, who knows. They never wrote a review about the Enermax Liberty either back when it was "cool" to own one. Like I've said before, they do write PSU reviews only when they run out of stuff to write about.
Cheers.
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It is precisely because of unneccessarily nasty angry posts like this, that, after 8 years, I dont post on AT forums anymore, and haven't for about 4 months so far. I just visit for the articles now. However, it seems I cant even escape this immature trash talk even in the review comments.

I have been a member of many forums - ars, Hardforum, abxzone, i4memory, xbit, techreport, xtremesys etc., all for the most part friendly co-operative back and forth type situations there. But only on AT do we see the anal retentive crowd post again and again what they dont seem to understand is hurtful (to the staff in this case).

Well, I like the PSU reviews, and if I were a mod, I would ban you permanently in a heartbeat. And if you like jonny guru so much - then go to his site, and keep your big mouth shut here. Reply

As for the reviews, you may have noticed that we didn't do ANY PSU reviews for a long time. Christoph is a new addition who is busily cranking out reviews. As with pretty much all of our content, we review what we're sent, and when people asked for some more reasonable PSUs he reviewed an Enermax Liberty 500W. There are, unfortunately, only so many hours in a day and so many PSUs in the lab, so I am not aware that Christoph has a 520W HX to review. Maybe he'll get one in the near future, maybe Corsair will send him something else, maybe they won't send units to Europe and we'll never get a review of one done. At some point, though, we need to establish a starting point and move forward, and that's what we're doing. Reply

I own, and think I would still prefer to own my Antec EA500 for much less. I keep hearing people putting Antec down for shoddy PSUs, but I own this EA500, and previously an Antec 450 SL, and have nothing but positive things to say about either. One of my friends however does sware by Enermax PSU's, but I think if I were to pay this much for a 2 year old(outdated) PSU, I think I would just pony up the extra for a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 EPS12V(they are only another $40 usd . . .).

Efficiency is one thing, and rock solid rails are another . . . We all know (or should) that Antec usually makes a decent PSU, Enermax does make a decent PSU, and that PC P&C(Seasonic) makes the best. Granted, anyone can put out a lemon(and sometimes that lemon is part of a 'run' that are all lemons). Reply

The "Lemons" you refer to are pretty much all of the Antec TruePower and SmartPower PSUs due to their use of fuhjyyu capacitors on the secondary side - they have a pretty much complete failure rate - I personally own 4 antec truepower II powersupplies and so far I've opened two, and so far both have had this problem, and I'm not even slightly alone Reply

I have the 620w Liberty and have owned it for nearly 2 years now. It started out on a Gigabyte K8N SLI-Pro, 4200+ X2, 150gb Raptor, 500gb Caviar, and 2x 7800GTX in SLI. It's now powering my new rig just fine Gigabyte P35-DS3R, E6850, 150gb Raptor, 2x 500gb Caviar, and a 8800GTX. It was a great purchase and I have not had a single complaint or problem with it in nearly 2 years. I would definitily not hesitate to buy another Enermax psu. Reply

i had the 400W Enermax PSU for 2 years now and its powering my server quite happy (8 hdds and an old P4 2.6ghz 2gb ram) never had an problem with them (use thermaltake TR2 420W-500w now for basic PSU as its the only good ones on my local trade lists never had one blow on me) Reply

fwiw, I bought two 350w enermax "basic" powersupplies about 2 years ago ( built two new machines for home.)

One of the units fans developed a bad squeek about 2 months into ownership.
I tried contacting enermax in two different ways - both via email.
One was their usa (my locale) website (which I think was a distributor site?), and the other their taiwanese/chinese site.

The squeaky PSU gets the new fan, and the squeaky wheel gets the oil. You just need to squeak a bit louder probably. That or you got unlucky. I haven't dealt with Enermax directly, but I have had a few companies (DFI, for example) where it took several email messages to get help. Not good at all, but eventually they did respond. The fact that their email support form fails 75% of the time didn't help, of course. Reply

While I think the Efficiency charts in load percentage are nice, if you included Efficiency charts in watts it would be more informative from a buying perspective.

The reason? I know the sum of system load is 375watts normally. The way it is now, if power supply XYZ has a max load of 650watts, I have to calculate where my ~375watts falls into that load chart (~57% load). But if the next power supply has 1000 watts max, then I have to yet again calculate what load percentage that may be for *that* power supply. If the Efficiency charts were in watts, instead of load, no calculations would be necessary. If I could look at your charts and see that XYZ power supply provided those watts the most efficiently, that would be the power supply I would get.

Maybe you could just provide a second X axis on the chart that included the watts.

Owned for for probably 18+ months now. It was a replacement for the early problems the antec neo-he's had. and I bought it at a retail store for about 110 bucks. I had no idea if it was good because it was so cheap (for a retail store, everyother branded 500w psu was 150~180 bucks).

its given me good stable power for all these years, and I hope for a few more. Reply

I've owned a 550W Enermax PSU for over 5 years! It was originally made for the old Thunder K7 dual AMD motherboards, but it now powers my Core 2 Duo. It's been a great power supply - never thought it would last so long. I did recently re-oil the fan (still running on the original fan as well). Reply

Nice review. I appreciate the diversion from the high end. I have been wondering how newer models would stack up against an old favorite. It is nice to see that there is a little more happening in the PSU industry than just wattage hikes. Reply

FSP Group products should be the baseline for the reviews and price/performance rating.
The AX-400 and AX-500 for value were great (and still are), though efficiency may be outdated. The blue series should be the one to compare to right now.

I've used the same AX for years through many upgrades, and it now powers a relative's workstation. I have the BlueStorm II 500 powering my new gaming rig, and now there are the FX-600-GLN and FX-700-GLN with even higher efficiency ratings.

High quality well priced components that deserve the comparison and recognition.
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I've bought a few AX400s and an AX450. On the surface, they seem to be great PSUs. Very quiet with that 120 mm fan. I don't think they have very good efficiency. Newegg only says >65%. I would like to see a review of one of them as well. Reply

I bought the Liberty 500W about a year ago and it has served me very well. I am very picky about noise, so I swapped the fan for a low noise Yate Loon model...best change ever. Now I cannot hear it at all!!!

It's interesting you mention good reliability, there seems to be lots of unhappy users on forums around the web having had problems with the Liberty series (mostly the 620W version from my experiance). I also replaced my 500W 6mo after purchase, but not because it failed, it just developed a rattle that drove me crazy. Enermax was very prompt at replacing it with a brand new one! Speaking of failures, I have a good friend who bought the 620W on my recommendation, and his blew up last week?! Whoops! Anyhow, thanks for the great review, you've endulged my confidence in the investment I made :) Reply

So I'm not sure I understand... you bought the 500W and swapped the fan for a Yate Loon, but then the PSU developed a rattle and you got a new unit? I don't know what causes a rattle in a PSU, but usually it's the fan, which you had already replaced.... Since you had already opened it, wouldn't it have been easy to just fix the issue yourself? Or was there something else causing a rattle? (I'm also surprised any manufacturer would replace a PSU that you had opened to swap fans.)

Anyway, one of the unfortunate aspects of PSUs is that a company can make an excellent product in one market and a lousy one in another. Sounds like the 500W Liberty might be great but the 620W has issues. I know I had a test system (from ABS) where a 620W failed during the two weeks of stress testing and benchmarks. They sent a replacement, which seemed to work fine, but long-term I couldn't say whether it was really stable. Reply